Guest ArtistsPeter Sprague, guitar

Peter Sprague was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 11, 1955. He was raised in Colorado until 1963, when his family moved to Del Mar, California. Inspired by his father's love of jazz, he took up the guitar when he was 12. By the age of 15 he was devoting all his time and energy to learning music. He took private lessons, played in his high school stage band and formed his first group, The Minor Jazz Quartet.

Following a year's study at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Sprague studied privately and performed around the San Diego area until 1976. That year found him moving to Boston to study with many notable musicians, including Pat Metheny, Madame Chaloff and Albin Czak (who taught Peter classical guitar). Peter returned to San Diego in 1978 and formed his ground breaking jazz group The Dance of the Universe Orchestra.

At the age of 20 Peter started recording his own albums on the Concord Jazz and Xanadu record labels. He has been a guest artist on many other records and performed and toured with Chick Corea, Hubert Laws, Dianne Reeves, David Benoit, Sergio Mendes and many others. On his debut with the Chick Corea band for a series of concerts at Disneyland, a noted Los Angeles Times jazz critic wrote in a review the following day "Peter Sprague is one of the emergent great guitarists." Peter also worked with Chick on the film score to the movie The Cat Chasers, starring actress Kelly McGillis.

From 1990 to 1993 Peter taught music at both California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He continues to teach every summer at the annual UCSD Jazz Camp in La Jolla, CA.

Peter was involved with the legendary record label GRP Records on a number of projects. He arranged Chick Corea's song "Spain" for the GRP All-Star Big Band record and video. This performance featured Randy Brecker, Lee Ritenour, Dave Weckl and Ernie Watts, among many other jazz legends. Peter was featured on David Benoit's GRP releases Letter to Evan and Shaken, Not Stirred. Also on GRP Records, Sprague played on Eric Marienthal’s recording One Touch featuring Russell Ferrante, Jimmy Haslip, Alex Acuna and Ivan Lins.

Peter Sprague has been the recipient of many awards, including an award for Best Contemporary Jazz Recording (1994) from the San Diego Music Awards, a Best Jazz Musician of the Year award in 2000 by the SDMA, a Best Jazz Group award from the San Diego Reader in 2002 and Best Jazz Artist of the Year awards from the SDMA in 2004 and 2007. He has published eleven of his own books, including The Jazz Solos of Chick Corea, and is the chief organizer and transcriber for Chick Corea’s music books published by Hall Leonard Publishing. He has created his own recording facility in Encinitas called SpragueLand, through which he has worked on over 300 CD projects since 1994.